The Great Gadfly

Vista Stinks!

In technical terms – it’s a pig

Bully Gates rides again

By Peter Kenney

Perhaps “Bully” would be a better name for Bill Gates than Billy. He may have built one of the largest fortunes in history by becoming the king of software but his marketing methods are pure hard sell. Consider his latest offering, the operating system known as Vista. My personal choice is anything by Apple for a number of reasons, but none of these really has anything to do with this piece. So, let's just deal with Mr. Gates and Vista. In a word, and according to many, many people whose comments I heave heard, Microsoft's newest operating system stinks. But, anyone who buys a new computer other than one made by Apple with an Apple software system installed will be forced to have the Vista experience.

She's some slow, ain't she?
The problem with Vista is that it has a few large problems. The first and most obvious is that it is, in the latest technical terms, a pig. This means it consumes a lot of the space in a computer's memory that could be used for other applications. A further problem is that it is slow.

Example: I have a friend here on the Cape who is a master carpenter and an accomplished videographer. In fact, he has won several awards, first as an amateur and then as a professional videographer. He has become very computer savvy as his editing methods progressed from old-fashioned tape to the off-line and digital technologies.

He recently helped his neighbor set up a new home computer, one that came with the Vista operating system software installed. (The instruction book for Vista is intimidating both in its size and in the fact that it reads something like the instruction manual for a nuclear submarine, or perhaps a space shuttle. Mere humans need not apply.) Once the computer was plugged in and booted up, he and the neighbor took it out for a test spin on the information super highway, the World Wide Web.

Armed with Microsoft's latest software and a brand new and highly rated computer -- not to mention the fastest Internet connection available to mortals -- the two watched the monitor expectantly. They watched and held their breaths for as long as they could, then took another deep breath and waited some more. It appears that Vista resembles the old Mercedes diesel engines...zero to sixty sometime before lunch. In his best Cape Cod drawl the neighbor observed, "She's some slow, ain't she?"

In fact, just for comparison's sake, my friend uses a ten-year-old computer that has never failed him. He has added considerable memory for video editing and various software packages -- all Windows-based -- for editing and word processing and he has even added Photoshop. Being thrifty, he still uses his original dial-up web access, which also seems to serve his needs quite nicely. He can boot up his ten-year old computer and be well beyond the entrance ramp to the information super highway before his neighbor’s Vista machine is any where near up and running.

Any operating system you want…as long as it’s Vista
I know another fellow, a man whose full time employment finds him producing video, editing video, and doing countless other very technical things with his computer. This is a man who used to build all of his own computer hardware. He just bought a brand new (and huge) HP laptop. This thing is a monster with a twenty-inch-wide screen and allegedly all the bells and whistles needed to run a major film studio's production department or, perhaps, even a small country.

This fellows comment on the Vista system is damning indeed: "I don't like it. It's slow and it doesn't do all the things they said it would or all the things I need it to do. The older Windows XP was much better." Hmm, my carpenter friend is still using exactly that, Windows XP, with superb results. Microsoft claims it is obsolete, but for my award-winning friend it is fast and reliable.

But here is the point: Microsoft leaves purchasers of new computers no choice. Remember, Microsoft does not produce, assemble or sell hardware. It is strictly a software company. So, every so often it must roll out a major new product and sell it to huge numbers of people or it will wither as a company. And, it must find ways to force, er...convince people to buy these new products.

Gates and his cronies have hit on an interesting, almost novel approach. It is called extortion. Undue pressure. Some might even say monopoly. This arm-twisting works in a deceptively simple way: any computer hardware manufacturer...any one...even the mighty companies such as HP and Dell must agree to sell all their new computers with only the Vista operating system. Dealers will and do tell prospective computer purchasers that they can still buy older Microsoft systems such as XP.

But as my professional video friend found with his new HP laptop, it appears impossible to install the Windows XP operating system once the Vista monster is in place. HP told him he could do so, but with all his years of technical expertise he has been unable to pull it off.

Software but hard sell
Leaving aside the issues of undue market influence and all the other nasty descriptors that might be applied to the Gates/Microsoft marketing strategies we must still reckon with one inescapable fact: Microsoft is forcing virtually every one who purchases a new computer -- other than those who opt for Apple -- to use an operating system that is slow, cumbersome and piggy when it comes to memory. If the people with whom I have spoken, including friends, computer professionals, and computer sales and marketing people are any indication -- Vista stinks!

But, should we assume Microsoft cares? Let's see...software but hard sell, hmmmmm. Bill Gates has certainly realized the ultimate American dream. But has he created the ultimate software nightmare? He truly is a genius. Who else in today's world can gain a net worth north of fifty billion dollars and maintain it by forcing people to buy crap?